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CBEHUGHT DEPOSIT 



(1 Dag 

in the Siskigous 

An Oregon Extravaganza 



J. FRANK HANLY 



When we contemplate the whole globe as one great 
dew-drop, striped and dotted with continents and 
islands, flying through space with other stars all 
singing and shining together as one, the whole 
universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 






, 5- L> \ 



Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part 
Of me and of my soul, as I of them? 
Is not the love of these deep in my heart 
With a pure passion? 

— Lord Byron : Childe Harold. 



Copyrighted. 1916 
J. Frank Hanly 

The Art Press 
Indianapolis 



/ _ 

AUG 28 1916 ^ 

©CI.A437556 ~^> 




'Beyond the Over-Hanging Rock: Every. Step a Revelation" 




m 




'noiJBb/3>l b qaj? yi3v3 rAooH gni^niiH-'iovO arij t 






Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. 

— Thomas Gray : Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 



12 



CONTENTS 



Once more, Mountains of the North, unveil 
Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by! 

And once more, ere these eyes that seek ye fail, 
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky 

Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave 
Its golden net-work in your belting woods, 
Smile down in rainbows in your falling floods 

And on your kingly brows at morn and eve 
Set crowns of fire! 

— John G. Whittier : Mountain Pictures. 



[14] 



List of Illustrations Page 19 

Introduction Page 25 

Foreword . . . . . Page 33 

Ashland Town Page 43 

Ashland Way Page 5 1 

Sunset Page 73 

Twilight Page 89 

Night Page 99 

Before the Dawn Page 119 

Sunrise . Page 135 



[15] 



/ climbed the canyon to a river-head, 

And looking backward saw a splendor spread, 

Miles beyond miles, of every sovereign hue 

And trembling tint the looms of Arras knew — 

A flowery pomp as of the dying day, 

A splendor where a god might take his way. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



[16 



'Where Shifting Waters Moil and Play' 



17]. 






roji 






XI 



And liquid lapse of murmuring streams. 

— John Milton : Paradise Lost. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 






Tax not my sloth that I 

Fold my arms beside the brook; 

Each cloud that floated in the sky 
Writes a letter in my book. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson : Apology. 



[20] 



Ashland Town Frontispiece 

Beyond the Over-Hanging Rock . Page 11 

Where Shifting Waters Moil and Play Page 17 

From Ashland's Flower-Embroidered Streets . . . Page 23 

A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel . Page 27 

Brave Rapids that Surge in Swift Release .... Page 3 1 

Fascinations of Light and Shade Page 35 

The Blue Bloom of the Mountain Lupine .... Page 40 

A Bank of White Heather Page 41 

Merry-Hearted Children Page 45 

Mt. Ashland's Hundred-Footed-Depth of Wind-Piled 

Snow Page 49 

A Road of Dreams Page 53 

Voluptuous Dells Page 57 

Hidden, Far-Away Falls Page 62 

Forest Temples Page 63 

Garnered-Up Excesses of Spilled Beauty Page 67 

McLoughlin's Sunlit Cone Page 71 

A Cloud of Pine and Fir Page 75 

Mt. Shasta: Every Cliff and Crag Page 79 



21] 



Changing Forms and Phantoms . ■ Page 83 

Streaming Through a Periphery of Cloud Page 87 

Sylvan Nooks Page 91 

Mt. Shasta : A Far-Flung, Space-Throned Wonder . Page 96 
Mt. Shasta : Depth, Heighth, Space, Color, Mystery 

and Calm Page 97 

The Moon — Changeful Nurseling Page 101 

Mountain Pines Page 105 

A White Up-Stretched Waste Page 109 

Unbridgeable Immensities Page 113 

Mt. Ashland's Ethered Peaks Page 117 

Cliffs and Pinnacles of the Summit Page 121 

Trial Fires Page 125 

Tumult of On-Coming Waters Page 129 

Steep and Rocky Desolations Page 133 

Granite-Founded, Cloud- Wrapped Shasta Page 137 

Forests Primeval Page 142 

Hoary Monarchs Page 143 

Haunting Voices of Innumerable Waters Page 147 

Between the Canyon's Walls Page 151 



[22 



* 








' 


87 










Page 


% 









"age 105 
Page 109. 

uk£ bawbio-idmH-iawoR e'bnsIriaA meriT 

■ 



[« 



isles of calm! dark, still wood! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude! 

— John G. Whittier : Lake Winnepesaukee. 



24 



INTRODUCTION 



— — . 



Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a heighth 
of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble 
landmark for all the surrounding region within a radius of 
a hundred miles. 

On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of 
the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the 
ice volcanoes of Mount Pitt, and the Three Sisters, rise out 
of the dark evergreen woods. 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 



[26] 




/ 



'A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel ". 

[27 1 



O'er these mountain wilds 
The insatiate eye with ever new delight 
Roams raptured, marking now where to the wind 
The tall tree bends its many-tinted boughs 
With soft, accordant sound. 

— Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 



28 



What land under the skies has that perfect abandon of 
beauty and wonder and variety of scenery that America 
possesses? The home of my forebears — the long-ago 
called Mona, the Isle of Beauty. And knowing the Isle 
of Man happily well, and knowing America — the Re- 
public — happily well, I call America, Mona, the Land of 
Prevailing Beauty. 

I have worn foot-paths through much of this beloved 
America, desert, mountain, lake region, far-goings of far 
streams and fair, plunge of cataract, torture of canyons 
born when the world was in travail, prairies leaning from 
the winds, supreme forests where night slumbered softly 
at high noon, gentle forests where the asters glowed along 
the edge and strange blue flowers sprung unawares through 
the swaying shadows of the woods — all these wheres are 
footprints of mine. Upon long mountains tired of the 
earth, along their aspiring peaks which watch the eastern 
horizon to take on their shining foreheads the muezzin 
call, "The day is come", there are my foot-prints. 

America, dear land of loveliness, I love thee well ! My 
heart roams thy unaccustomed wastes what time my feet 
are fettered to many tasks. I exult in thee as the eagle 
exults in the toppling mountain crag. 

"Where rolls the Oregon!" That phrase had alway to 
my ears Miltonic music. It gave the sense of distance, of 
urgency irresistible, and of mountain origin. From that 
melodious poet-phrase I think Oregon has been to me a 
land of wonder, of awaking poetry, though I knew not 
the land and scenes; and since, I have trodden many of 
its valleys and mountains, and have camped on its cascade 



29] 



summits pinnacled with pine, and have watched for days 
the ever shifting, never-tiring coigne of vantage and 
beauty of meadow-silence and river-music and mountain- 
solace. 

I remember so vividly the golden day I first came to 
Ashland. On one side, a wide valley, and great summer 
meadows smelling like hay in harvest-time, and on its 
other side, a nearby-mountain shadow, — an invitation, 
and stream at song. The mountain and the stream and 
the long winding ravine receding upward called me, 
"When are you coming?", and my glad feet answered, 
"Now", and my heart said to my feet, "Hurry up and on". 

Up and on where the mountain led whose shadows held 
the stream-sources in their cool hiding places, and the 
mountain now and then would flash a look upon me vigi- 
lantly and then vanish as it were a coquette woman- 
mountain. Ah, but that day was sweet to my heart, and 
all these years increasingly sweet to my memory. 

And now comes a man of affairs, a reformer, and as far 
wandering a traveler, who has spoken at this mountain's 
foot, and who has listened to this mountain's stream a- 
murmuring in its wanderings to the sunlight and subdued 
shadow, and the mountain has clambered into his heart, 
and the stream is found winding away across the meadow 
of his dream. 

May he make them fling shadows and music through 
mystic years across the dreams of the lovers of loveliness 
who are yet to be. 

— William A. Quayle. 



[30 



ays 

ge and 
;intain- 

j .y I first came to 
rid great summer 
est-time, and on its 
■ 

■ntain and th- md 

;ng up 
glad fe 

"Hurry up and on", 
i led whose shadows 
ling places, and the 

T i , ,V • ,l I ■ 

,gnfv/3H->bo>l 

■ ."nn'v/ -r. 

but tha 

r, who 
as listened to 
wanderings t 

i 
of 1 

ad music through 
is of the lovers of loveliness 



a 



His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 

— William Wordsworth : Song at the Feast of 

Brougham Castle. 



32 



FOREWORD 



To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, 
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, 
Where things that own not mans dominion dwell, 
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been; 
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen; 
With the wild flock that never needs a fold: 
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; 
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold 
Converse with Nature s charms, and view her stores 
unroll d. 

— Lord Bryon : Childe Harold. 



34 



d and fell, 

dl, 

. 

! 



u 



A blessed spot! Oh, how my soul enjoy d 
Its holy quietness, with what delight 
Escaping from mankind I hasten d there 
To solitude and freedom! 

— Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 



36 



God's out-of-doors! How I love it! The trees, the 
mountains and the sea! They possess the very soul of 
me — the majesty, the glory and the sublimity of them all. 

The beauty, the silence and the far-zoned splendor of 
the night; the effulgence of the full-orbed day; the still, 
enchanting tenderness of the twilight — these are wonders 
anywhere, but seen and experienced among the Siskiyous 
they transcend description, lift me out of myself, and link 
me with the Infinite. 

Here is the story of such a day, such a twilight, such a 
night, and such a morning — a day and a night in the Sis- 
kiyous ! 

If in the following pages I have conveyed even a little 
of what I saw and felt, there is justification for this book. 
It has been written in the midst of a busy life, through a 
period of four years, as the mood would seize me, in hotels, 
in railroad trains and in the still small hours. I am con- 
scious of its imperfections, but its writing has beem a joy, 
and I give it to the public with the hope that others may 
catch at least a glimpse of what I saw, and share with me 
the exaltation and the rapture of an elate and Godful 
hour. 

The photographs for the illustrations were not taken by 
me. For these I am indebted above all others to Mr. 
Homer Billings, who was my companion on the trip up 
Ashland Way to Ashland Mountain, and who, with Mr. 
L. W. Marble, both of Ashland, made two trips to obtain 
for me the necessary views. Their work was largely a 
labor of love and of friendship. 

Other illustrations were furnished by Mr. F. L. Camps, 
of Ashland ; by Mr . C. R. Miller, of Klamath Falls ; the Com- 
mercial Club of Ashland, and the Commercial Club of 
Medford. The illustration of the "hidden far-away falls" 



37 



was furnished by the Commercial Club of Medford, and 
is a photograph of a waterfall near that city, and is not 
found on Ashland Way. 

"A Bank of White Heather" is by Mr. Asahel Curtis, 
of Seattle, Wash. ; "Lupines" is the work of Mr. Herbert W. 
Gleason, of Boston, Mass. ; "Mountain Pine" was furnished 
by Miss Elizabeth S. Curtis, 'of Seattle, Wash. These 
three are from Mr. John H. Williams' book, "The Moun- 
tain That Was God." 

"A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel" is by Mrs. H. A. Towne, of 
Harvard, Illinois, and is from a scene on Mt. Tacoma. 

The plates for the multi-colored illustrations were made 
by the Stafford Engraving Company, of Indianapolis, In- 
diana. Their excellence is due to the care and skill of Mr. 
E. E. Stafford. 

The book itself is done by the Art Press, of Indiana- 
polis, Indiana, to the President of which, Mr. Ray D. 
Barnes, I am under special obligation for many helpful 
suggestions. 

The introduction is by Bishop William A. Quayle, of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, poet, orator and church- 
man, who himself has taken much of the same journey and 
who in a peculiar sense is a child of the out-of-doors. 

I would not be just if I were to omit from this foreword, 
recognition of my obligation to my Secretary, Miss Hallie 
McNeil, whose thoughtful, discriminating care in the prep- 
aration of the text and in the selection of the quotations 
used has been constant and unremitting. 

To all of these friends I make grateful acknowledgment. 

J. Frank Hanly, 
Indianapolis, Indiana. 

May 1, 1916. 



[38 



. Bright spots of color, where beds of wild flowers 
swing their sweet bells noiselessly. 

— John L. Stoddard : California. 



39 




[40] 




c 

CO 

CQ 
< 



[41 



Bright on the mountain s heathy slope, 
The day's last splendors shine. 

— Robert Southey : Rudiger. 



* 



42 



ASHLAND TOWN 



At the close of day, when the hamlet is still, 
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, 

When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill, 

And nought but the nightingale s song in the grove. 

— James Beattie : The Hermit. 



[44] 



when the hamlet is still, 

-i3vo ,gr: •itgkl tttibiktob tlsri .risiblirb b^-iBSfi-v-raM" 

."eeanaqh ineibsT ojni nua arfo yd b^zziA ztiuil 



[*M 




1 



So fall the weary years away, 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

-John G. Whittier : Summer By The Lakeside. 



46 



The country is lyric, — the town dramatic. 

When mingled they make the most perfect musical drama. 

— Henry W. Longfellow : Kavanaugh. 



Ashland is a city beautiful, built two thousand feet 
above the level of the sea — 

A jewel set in the bosom of an enchanted valley, sur- 
rounded by the encircling peaks of the Siskiyous and the 
protecting parapets of the Cascades, in the midst of all 
but endless summer, in sight of eternal snows — 

An aquarelle of contentment, river-bordered, mountain- 
framed, lighted by perennial sunshine — 

A prodigal dowered with an unspendable portion — a 
perpetual, recurring heritage of flowers and fruits and 
grains — 

A siren, sentient with charm and lure; held in the 
sensuous arms of enamoring, desire-fulfilling hills; coaxed 
into forgetfulness by soft, consoling winds, sweet and 
lingering as the memory of a cradle-lullaby, and canopied 
by skies, chaste and tender as a maiden's soul. 

I knew her fewer than an hundred hours. But in that 
brief while she broke down every barrier time had set 
about my heart; woke my somnolent soul; called dead 
affection back to life, and taught me how to love, again. 

I cannot forget her, and if I could, I would not. The 
witchery of her form and the charm and color of her 
setting haunt me. I have thought of her until the memory 
of her is entwined with every vital fiber of my better self. 

The knowing of her has so sensitized my mind and 
enriched and intensified my soul-sensibility, that were I 



No splendid poverty, no smiling care, 

No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur there. 

— Edward Young : Love of Fame. 



[47 



jl. 



/ have a room wherein no one enters 

Save I myself alone: 
There sits a blessed memory on a throne, 

There my life centers. 

— Christina G. Rossetti : Memory. 



to forget her my poverty would be infinite — I should die 
of heart-hunger. 

In the halls of my remembrance she has a gallery all 
her own. In it there hangs no other picture, or ever shall. 
Consecrated to her and her alone, it is too sacred to be 
shared. And, ah me, what a gallery it is ! And how much 
it means to me! I have but to enter it, to be obsessed 
and live again those primal wondrous hours : 

From her rose-embowered door-ways I see and hear 
merry-hearted children, half concealed amid bending, 
over-ladened boughs, plucking with shouts and laughter 
mouth-watering fruits kissed by the sun into radiant 
ripeness. 

From her flower- embroidered streets I behold Mc- 
Loughlin's majestic, sun-lit cone; mark old Grizzly's fir- 
and-pine-clad slopes, and look upon Mt. Ashland's dis- 
tant, hundred-footed depth of wind-piled snow. 

From her vine-wreathed gates I listen to the ripple of 
the River Bear, catch the mystic gurgle and see the silvery 
shimmer of Ashland Creek, and hear the romantic tales 
its garrulous waters tell. 

And from her resplendent portals, on a wondrous sum- 
mer afternoon, companioned by a new-found friend, my 
eager feet are set in Ashland Way, amid scenes of tran- 
scendent beauty, on an unforgetable journey toward the 
snow and silence of God's eternal hills. 



The azure curtain of God's House 

Draws back, and hangs star-pinned to space. 

— Joaquin Miller : A Song of the South. 



[48 



rn : Memory. 



e infinite — I should 

she has a gallery 

or ever shall, 
is too sacred to be 
it a gallery ; how much 

out to ent 
il wondrous houi 
svered door-ways I 
, half concealed amid bending, 
)lucking with shouts and laughter 

. 
Fro 
Loi 



the 

shi ... and i 

aters : 

it portals, on a won. 

riend, my 
id Way, amid scenes of tran- 
fgetable journey toward ; 
■ : 



[PH 



Here, too, the Elements forever veer, 
Ranging round with endless interchanging; 

In endless revolutions here they roll; 

Forever their mysterious work renewing; 
The parts all shifting, still unchanged the whole. 

— Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 



50 






ASHLAND WAY 



-«»-ag 



The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

— William Wordsworth : Three Years She Grew 

in Sun and Shower. 



[52] 




'A Road of Dreams, of Wonder-Wildness, Quiet Grandeur 
and Multitudinous Delights". 



53 



Hi 




^ 



Haunted with loveliness, 
How can I fare .away to other heavens, 
Missing innumerable heavens here. 

— Charles Hanson Towne : Beauty. 



54 



Along this quiet wood road, winding slow, 

The gentian reigned, an undisputed queen. 

— Elaine Goodale : Fringed Gentian. 



From the city's street, stretching between the sinuous 
windings of Ashland Creek and the weather-pitted cliffs 
that mark the tortuous limits of Ashland Canyon, lies 
Ashland Way — a road of dreams, of wonder-wildness, 
quiet grandeur and multitudinous delights. Crossing and 
re-crossing the turbulent Creek again and again; winding 
in and out through forest temples reared in faith, not fear, 
and brooding, dateless woods; across tender valleys and 
brook-lulled meadows; beneath sentinel pines and solemn 
hemlocks; through fir-dark solitudes; along floral terraces 
and powdery slopes; up rugged steeps, under Italian 
skies ; it contracts finally into a narrow, shadowy trail and 
loses itself at last among the peaks and snows of Ashland 
Mountain. 

Its length from city-gate to mountain-peak is fifteen 
miles and every step a revelation. Halfway between the 
noontide and the end of a matchless day in mid- July, we — 
my new-found friend and I — left the city and faced the 
calm-fronted hills and the far-blue bulwarks of the moun- 
tains. Passing through the outlying-sections of the town, 
with their segregated houses, luxurious gardens, and fruit- 
ladened orchards; along the Creek beyond the Over- 
Hanging Rock and the Pumping Station of the Water 
Plant; we were soon in the midst of a primal solitude, 
hemmed in on either side by vertical, high-raised walls, 
through whose solid centuried-masonry the waters from 



Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 

Yes, to the very end. 
Will the day's journey take the whole long day! 

From morn to night, my friend. 

— Christina Rossetti : Up-Hill. 



V] 



No sound is uttered, — but a deep 
And solemn harmony pervades 
The hollow vale from steep to steep. 

— William Wordsworth : Composed upon an 
Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and 
Beauty. 

the melted snows of the Siskiyous ages before had rent 
and torn their torrential way! 

To the brink of the walls, along the horizon's azure- 
tinctured rim, clung attenuated pines, sparse and feathery 
of limb, stirred by invisible, homeless winds. Above the 
pines, a sky of magical, heavenly blue, flecked with slow- 
moving, dream-driven clouds, soft as eider-down, wander- 
ing in aimless journeyings toward shoreless, illimitable seas. 

Between the Canyon's walls, the forest's chime and 
charm — its mysteries of shapes and monuments and 
hidden, summonsing forms; its immemorial lisp, a mur- 
murous, living stillness; its whispering harmonies, a 
threnody of praise. 

For hours we journeyed through a fairy-land, as illu- 
sive and enchanting as a dreamer's dream : 

Now knee-deep in the waters of the Creek creeping in 
lazy languor, or held in placid, meditative pools, clear as 
sunlight, pure as pearl, touched by winds too soft to 
dimple their unrippled bosoms. 

Now lost in park-like glens, and aisles over-arched with 
deep, new-leafed green, and bending, blossoming boughs ; 
along paths walled in with dogwood and with laurel tall 
as trees, and set with rhododendron and red-barked, 
round-leafed manzanita, a mass of bloom. 

Now held by the haunting voices of innumerable 
waters; tender, crooning bars; the Creek's enchanted lilt; 



The western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massive thickets 
three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods as far south 
as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita. 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 

[56 1 



ipon an 
Splendour and 



before had 
• 
As, aloi izon's azure- 

lenuatedpii .- and f. : 

:-ible, homeles . .Above the 

avenly blu 
soft at 
igstoward shorele. 

walls, the fa ne and 

mysteries of shapes and monuments and 

imonsing forms; its immemorial lisp, a mur- 

larmonies 
SstO bns >bo# lo barmoH dfed zuoLdquloV 

■ 
knee-dei 

■ 
ith do :aurel 

I set with rhododendron and red-barked, 
nzanita, a mass of bloot 
the haunt, 
ling bars ; the 



■ 



And lo, the rifted rocks of the ravine 

With penciled, old-gold violets in between, 

The manzanita with its bells aswing 

To tell of small, tart apples she will bring, 

The ceanothus with its white bloom spread 

Upon the ground like crumbs of bread, 

The poppy lifting up its warm, red gold 

Our miser hearts in heaven will hold, 

Nemophila, cream-cup, cyclamen, 

Azalea, lupine — oh, I know just when 

My lost ones come, and where the eye may catch 

Each thronging clan in its own happy patch. 

-Anna Catharine Markham : A Sierra Memory. 



58 



/ have seen whole hillsides given over to a blue heaven of lupines, 
sometimes shoulder-high, with sapphire spikes; and I have seen azalea 
by the mile, with a billion yellow-belted bees all busy at their harvesting. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



the murmurous call of invisible cascades, and of hidden, 
far-away falls — hill-stilled, distant and dreamy; low, soft 
sounds — liquid gurglings — and intermittent silences 
broken by drops of languorous music. 

Now seated in mossy, voluptuous dells formed of rock 
and creek and circling sky — wind-forgotten corners — 
trellised and fragrant with honey-suckle and the slender, 
trailing, vine-like leaves of the creeping snow-berry. 

Now pausing where shifting, hurrying waters moil and 
play, gliding in shimmering sheen with rythmic cadence 
over pebbly bottoms, holding imprisoned rainbows in their 
crystal depths. 

Now yielding to the subtle, insinuating lure of sylvan 
nooks and vine-wreathed bowers of foliate beauty — seclu- 
sions of cool greenery hid between the hills; — filled with 
the fragrancies of herb and blossom, tapestried with ferns 
and with columbine, festooned with the warm blue-bloom 
of the mountain lupine, garlanded with lilac and with the 
white clustering flowers of the syringa, and peopled with 
the dream-and-wonder children of the forest — dryads and 
oreads, fays . and nixies, satyrs and fairy-midgets, dis- 
robed and naked, courtesy ing and dancing to symphonies 
of sunlight and the thrill of love-languorous, half-hushed 
music wrought by amorous aphrodites on aerial flutes. 

And the sun had a crown 
Wrought of gilded thistledown, 

And a scarf of velvet vapor 
And a raveled rainbow gown; 
And his tinsel-tangled hair 
Tossed and lost upon the air 

Was glossier and flossier 
Than any anywhere. 

— James Whitcomb Riley : The South Wind and the Sun. 

[59] 



Here are memorials of the glacial plows — crags, gorges, cataracts. 
Here the lordly conifers of the Sierras are gathered in splendid com- 
pany, led by the unique and towering sequoia. Here also are the thou- 
sand Sierran flowers, terrace after terrace, all assembled in one fragrant 
and shining sisterhood. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 

Now clambering through brave rapids that surge in 
swift release, then tumble and rage in quick, mad haste, 
down deep and tortuous ways, rock-hewing, canyon- 
carving. 

Now lingering amid narrow, sun-showered, bloom- 
heaped meadows — garnered-up excesses of spilled beauty 
garbed in green and gold, carpeted with violets, blue, 
white and yellow; aflame with countless, light-lured, wind- 
wooed flowers, redolent with perfumes — gardens of Allah ; 
bowers of Avalon; trembling seas of color. 

Now looking in silent wonder at the tumult of on- 
coming, multitudinous waters, whipped into foaming tur- 
bulence and lashed into fury — whirling wonders of power 
and sound — spouting plumes of mist and billows of foam, 
forging gleams that flash and die, tossing sprays of min- 
gled pearl and sunlight, and plunging at last in an im- 
petuous torrent of changeless, changing forms with catar- 
actine press and leap, over precipitous declivities into an 
entanglement of chasms. 

Now walking beneath gigantic trees — hemlocks, firs 
and redwoods — hoary monarchs of a long-gone reign, but 
playing still their solemn primal symphonies. 



. . . . Where the mountain wall 
Is piled to heaven, and through the narrow rift 
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet 
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar; 
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind 
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan 
Of forests and far-off waterfalls. 

— John G. Whittier : The Bridal of Pennacook. 



60] 



Pursuing, echoes calling 'mong the rocks. 

—Abraham Coles : The Microcosm. 



y!Iii2-IIiM| 
bH ni 




Talk not of temples, there is one 

Built without hands, to mankind given; 
Its lamps are the meridian sun 

And all the stars of heaven, 
Its walls are the cerulean sky, 

Its floors the earth so green and fair, 
The dome its vast immensity; 

All Nature worships there! 

— David Vedder : The Temple of Nature. 



64 



This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not 
merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty. 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 

In such green palaces the first kings reign d, 
Slept in their shades, and angels entertain d, 
With such old counsellors they did advise, 
And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise. 

— Edmund Waller : On St. James Park. 

Now standing awe-stirred within the centuried shadows 
and conscious-silences of wistful gold-barked, storm- 
coated sugar pines, two hundred feet in heighth, hung 
with silvery-gray needles — swaying mysteries old as pagan 
priests — towering upward until their high-raised branches, 
caressed by quiet far-away winds, give off a still, sad, 
slow rustling, now wierd and moan-like, now a paean, 
now waning into a dirge, and finally dying away into soli- 
tude and silence like the cry of a wounded, vanishing soul. 

Now descending into dew-breeding shades and sunken 
solitudes, down into interminable labrynthine depths, 
where no flower blooms or grows ; where the daylight but 
half expels the gloom even at noontide, and no sound 
penetrates the heavy stillness save the forlorn and medi- 
tative coo of a deserted and distant wood-dove. 

Now ascending through alternating gleam and gloom 
along leaf-entangled ways fringed with low-growing alpine 
flowers; aglow with rainbow tinted iris, rose-colored 
orchids and nodding mountain lilies, rich in fragrance 
and in beauty; up through elevated, peak-sentineled val- 
leys, into amphitheaters backed by forest walls, rimmed 
by sit-fast hills, and roofed by seas of celestial azure — 
shrines for Nature's worship ; altars for her adoration, set 
apart by a wild strange beauty, primal as the world's 



Lying at rest we hear a long sighing music among the high boughs; 
and, if you are a skillful listener, you will hear hushed voices within 
the music — the chorus of the mournful dryads departing before the 
irreverent steps of man. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 

[65] 



Long thoughts must visit the heart of a man as he listens to the sad, 
mysterious music that goes out from a tossing sea of pines. How 
strangely like it is to the wild music that reaches us from the waters of 
the ocean ,at the roots of the world. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



first garden; temples for the hymning of her mysteries, 
vibrant with chords beyond all art — chastened with the 
mournful minor of the world's eternal undertones. 

Now lured by expanding vistas of dream-like spaces — 
wild welters of color and fascinations of light and of shade 
— flecked by heather, starred with paint-brush and set 
with gentian and valerian. 

Now toiling up steep and rocky desolations, along the 
edge of precipitous declivities, over a trail so narrow that 
two could not walk abreast — a trail fringed with vari- 
colored mountain flowers and arched with the over-lap- 
ping boughs of Alpine hemlocks through whose shifting 
intricacies the slanting sun-rays glint and fade, flecking 
the sinuous path with dappled, changing shadows. 

Now clambering up the mountain's rugged, creviced 
side, toward eagle aeries and splendid isolations, where 
yellow wallflowers cling to rock and cliff, and the dwarfed 
and miniatured trees wear spiral profusions of red blos- 
soms. 

There at last we stood. Below us, wound the Creek, 
divided and dwindled now into many tiny, snow-born 
rills and rivulets slipping from under melting, wind-piled 
drifts held in the mountain's gashed and furrowed bosom, 
its truculent babblings hushed into sweet-voiced invita- 

shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 

Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 

Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 

And skies, — the hollow of God's hand! 

— John G. Whittier : Lake Winnepesaukee. 

[66] 



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And haply gain, through parting boughs, 
Grand glimpses of great mountain brows 
Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen 
Of lakes deep set in valleys green. 

-John G. Whittier : The Seeking of the Waterfall. 



68 



The sun-forsaken ranges below fell away to dark neutral tints. But 
the fires upon the crest burned on, deepening from gold to burnished 
copper, a colossal beacon flaming high against the sunset purple of the 
eastern skies. 

— John H. Williams : The Mountain That Was God. 



tions, sinking at times into mere ululations of sound ; and 
further yet, a cloud of pine and fir, backed by purple hills, 
crowned by mountain-blue melting into purple and illu- 
mined by refracted rays of light thrown from high-raised 
pinnacles of snow and ice. 

Beyond the forest and the hills, pushing through and 
towering above their empurpled crown of blue, rose 
McLoughlin's rounded, pure white dome, its solitudes 
agleam with sunset fire. Above us, gaunt and naked cliffs 
and crags — granite giants formed by Jove-hurled bolts 
in the chaotic, cataclysmic hour when worlds were made — 
lifted their lightning-stabbed and thunder-riven crests, 
in portentious, awesome sovereignty — calm, silent, ma- 
jestic. From there we saw the closing scene in the day's 
vast drama — the set of sun, the twilight hour and. the 
fall of night — and then betook ourselves to sleep beneath 
the silent, shadowy trees. 



When the highest peak began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped 
in sunshine, however glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into 
the body of the sun itself. Then the supernal fire slowly descended, 
with a sharp line of demarkation separating it from the cold, shaded 
region beneath; peak after peak, with their spires and ridges and cas- 
cading glaciers, caught the heavenly glow, until all the mighty host 
stood transfigured, hushed, and thoughtful, as if waiting the coming of 
the Lord. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 

[69] 



/ know a veteran redwood standing high 
Upon a leafy cliff in Siskiyou, 
Looking on hill-tops billowing to the blue, 

And looking on bright regions of the sky: 

A cluster of young sons are ever nigh, 

In banded cirque about him, to befriend 
When canyons brim with quiet — to defend 

When lightnings probe the dark and torrents cry. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



70] 



standing high 
if in Siskiyou, 

; billow lue, 

A cl 

• :• ■ I 



[K 



The light of Day 

Still loves to stay 
And round that pearly summit play; 

How fair a sight, 

That plain of light, 
Contended for by Day and Night. 

— John L. Stoddard : Switzerland. 



72 



SUNSET 



Then comes the sunset with its purple and gold, not a 
narrow arch on the horizon, but oftentimes filling all the sky. 
The level cloud-bars usually present are fired on the edges, 
and the spaces of clear sky between them are greenish-yellow 
or pale amber, while the orderly flocks of small overlapping 
clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly touched with crimson 
like the outleaning sprays of maple-groves in the beginning 
of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes 
the sky to the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and 
transfiguring the islands and making all the water look like 
wine. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 



74 



j sunset with its purple and gold, not a] 

i the horizon, but oftentimes filling all the sky. 

i 'oud-bars usually present are fired on the edges, 

aces of clear sky between them are greenish-yellow 

:#^ffl&fefeta ; '- il%ti§i$JM on 

outleci 
astern 

\ 
uring the ■ 



[!^J! 



. . Twilight deepened round us. Still and black 
The great woods climbed the mountain at our- back. 

— John G. Whittier : Mountain Pictures. 



76 



The night has a thousand eyes, 

And the day but one; 
Yet the light of the bright world dies, 
With the dying sun! 

— F. W. Bourdillon : Light. 



The evening time had come — the golden lettered hour 
— the miracle of departing day. Spell-charms were 
already weaving. The azure deeps were becoming deli- 
cately colored and the blue intensities of the day growing 
pale with the pallor of silver and of primrose. The air 
was softly lucent and the sky a velvet plain, rehued by 
myriads of invisible brushes. 

Dream-footed shadows, softened by hints of amber and 
tints of bronze, were appearing; the mauve of the hills 
deepened into purple and to pink. There were touches of 
lavender and gleams of rose, of pearl and of copper; fingers 
of opalescent light; flushes of crimson; flashes of ultra- 
marine; and far-stretched, high-flung bands of royal red; 
trebles of color mating with trebles of color; and delicate 
intimate cloud films, lustered with loosened turquoise 
shaken into the air. 

The distant, sun-illumined vistas of the hills were dark- 
ening into dusk. The tapestried horizon and the sky's 
empurpled hem were one. Above them a world of enskied 
glory reached and spread its pearl-tinctured panels, set 
with amethystine altars, inlaid with alabaster, fused with 
hyacinths and garnets, and draped with chrisophrase ; 
tipping the clouds with flame; filling the higher regions 
with an opaline radiance, mingled with all the greens and 
gold that ever were, with bits of vague, resplendent blue 
between, blending the red of the ruby with the yellow of 



But beauty seen is never lost, 

God's colors all are fast; 
The glory of his sunset heaven 

Into my soul is passed. 
-John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. 

[77] 



Airy turrets purple piled. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson : May-day. 

A wonderful glory of color, 
A splendor of shifting light. 
— Margaret Sangster : A Winter Sunset. 

the topaz, and culminating in a brilliant "sun-flashed 
path of gold". 

The pillared mountains were bathed in romantic light, 
entrenched in beauty. Their trails were celestial ways; 
their passes, glory-guarded; and their rampired walls, 
visions of castled grandeur; every cliff and crag and ice- 
capped, star-loved peak, a minaret of Alpine fire. 

But the crux and crisis of the wonder-working drama 
was in the West. There the final scene was being staged 
in a frenzy of emulation, with a magnificence of investi- 
ture and a pomp and grandeur of pageantry unparalleled ; 
with side-lights undreamable and an imagery untrans- 
latable and unknowable. 

The Sovereign of the Solar Universe approached his 
death-couch, regal and imperial as when he held himself 
the Lord of Light and Power. He appeared a colossal 
passion flower, from which flowed and blended every 
shade and tint of color Nature ever knew, radiating from 
his flame-lit chalice quivering shafts of fire, trembling 
sweeps of scarlet, pools of purple-veined glory, and palpi- 
tating seas of umber encompassing islands of crimson and 
of gold. 

Emanating from him and streaming through a peri- 
phery of cloud, a profundity of enraptured radiance 
spilled and poured itself into the bosom of the aerial, 
tideless sea in which he was emersed, softening at length 



Touched by a light that hath no name, 

A glory never sung, 
Aloft on sky and mountain wall 
Are God's great pictures hung. 
— John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. 



78 



Ight. 

mer : A Winter Sun 

ng in a brilliant "sun-flashed 

;old 

Thi. ins were bathed in romantic light, 

ity. Their trails were celestial ways; 

the .ry-guarded; and their rampired walls, 

d grandeur; every cliff and crag and ice- 

ed peak, a minaret of Alpine fire. 

le crux and crisis of the wonder-working drama 

te West. There the final scene was being staged 

y of emulation, with a magnificence of investi- 

r id a pomp and grandeur of pageantry unparalleled ; 

ide-lights undreamable and an imagery untrans- 

■■*^si*pi8«0«Afi^ b ™ y v T* b ^ m 

I he bovereig. 
ith-couch, 
the Lord of Lig 
sion flow, 
de and tint c 
flame-lit cha 
s of see. I palpi- 

seas of umber encompassing islands of cr ind 

Id. 
Emanating from him and streaming through a peri- 
phery of cloud, a profundity of enraptured radiance 
spilled and poured itself into the bosom of the aer 
tideless sea in which he was emersed 



Touched by a light that ha 
A glory never sung, 

Aloft on sky and mc 
A great pict 

Whittier 






Purple peaks that edge the night 
Crowned with ineffable, far fadeless light. 

-Anna Catharine Markham : A Sierra Memory. 



The flora of the mystic mine-world 
Around me lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems! 

— John G. Whittier : The Pageant. 



into patches of caressing light and melting in the dim 
distance into lakes of lingering calm and gulfs of blissful 
peace, held between banks of rubied gold and lulled by- 
hills of topple-down. 

Around and about him, half veiling him with their 
glory-crevassed draperies hung groups of intimate, coax- 
ing clouds, laced with silver, edged with scarlet and looped 
with rainbows, radiant even in their hour of mourning, 
illumined by the parting glories of the dying, trans- 
figured monarch. 

The scene was big with grandeur, impressed with the 
symbol and the fact of majesty — a vision of mingled 
beauty and sublimity. 

The obsequies were imperial, becoming the funeral 
rites of an emperor of worlds, of planets, of stars and of 
constellations, and of systems vast and illimitable in 
extent and wealth as space and time could hold. 

Airy messengers clad in uniforms of resplendent light 
and bearing banners of rose and of crimson, and pennants 
of red and of gold, mounted on invisible steeds swifter and 
fleeter than thought, bore dispatches to the four corners 
of the heavens, and the bannered armies of the sky in- 
stantly responded. Their movements were hurried and 
instantaneous, but orderly and noiseless as Time itself. 
No dispatch miscarried or failed of delivery. No summons 
was misunderstood or unresponded to. There was neither 



/ fancy all shapes are there; 
Temple, mountain, monument, spire; 
Ships rigged out with sails of fire, 

And blown by the evening air. 

— J. K. Hoyt : A Summer Sunset. 

[81] 



While round his couch's golden rim 

The gaudy clouds, like courtiers, crept — 

Struggling each other's light to dim, 

And catch his last smile e'er he slept. 

— Thomas Moore : The Summer Fete. 



disorder nor confusion. Pallbearers of radiant, dazzling 
effulgence silently took their places about the cloud- 
draped casket. 

Funeral guards, gigantic in proportion and gorgeous in 
apparel, swiftly encircled them. Orchestras with instru- 
ments tuned to cords ineffable filled the sky with music 
beyond the reach or grasp of finite ear or sense. After 
these came countless squadrons of bright-robed, white- 
maned, cloud-cavalry, followed by innumerable corps of 
wonder-clad mist-soldiers, and these by seried columns of 
twilight infantry, rank upon rank. On their flanks troops 
of gold-and-jeweled-crossed videttes signalled their grief 
and courtesied their farewells. 

In the offings the assembled navies of the aerial world 
dropped their flags to half-mast and set the insignias of 
sorrow, wine-red and purple-blended, streaming from 
every spar and flag-wrapped turret. 

The stalwart hills, stirred by the wondrous pageant and 
melted by regret and grief, waved adieus, and the haughty 
mountains bowed their snow-crowned heads in sorrow. 

Slowly the imperial, martial procession passed. The 
glittering pageantry dissolved. The gleaming banners 
vanished, and the marching armies disappeared, leaving 
in their illumined pathway chariots of trailing clouds and 
the strange and changing forms and phantoms of twi- 
light's mysterious hour. 



The air is full of hints of grief, 
Strange voices touched with pain. 
-Thomas Bailey Aldrich : Landscape Twilight. 

[82] 




'Changing Forms and Phantoms". 

[83 1 



/ have oftentimes 

Felt in the midnight silence of my soul 
The call of God. 

— Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 



84 



The breeding place of immortality: 
Young angels here might lay a soothing hand 
On space made infinite and grieved time 
Become eternal. 

— Anna Hempstead Branch : Nimrod. 



Beyond the crags and peaks of the Siskiyous and of the 
Coast Range, somewhere in the realms of vast and distant 
space, they buried the Regal Ruler whose demise and 
obsequies we had witnessed, in a grave of mist and cloud, 
with celestial ado and parade, and amid heavenly pomp 
and splendor — buried him as they had buried him at the 
evening-tide of every day since Omnipotence proclaimed 
him Lord of Earth and Star and Universe, and as they 
will continue to bury him at the evening-tide of every day 
until the earth and stars shall dissolve and the universe 
be rolled as a scroll and time and evening-tide shall be no 
more! And from now until then, through untold ages, 
men shall journey there, even as we had journeyed, and 
behold with reverential awe the miracle of his daily death 
and the imperial pageantry of his obsequies. 



Turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests 
hushed and tranquil, towering one above another on the slopes of the 
hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber 
light, and seemed to say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto 
you". 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 

[85 1 



What unseen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair? 
What eyes look through, what white wings fan 

These purple veils of air? 
What Presence from the heavenly heights 

To those of earth stoops down? 

— John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. 



86] 



jsii3B srljv'lfe'ff xib balliqe aonsibei baiu:) 

U eyes look th, .'eae.^abbij 

77i£ -«''• 

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mm 



Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows 
In yonder West: The fair, frail palaces, 
The fading Alps and archipelagoes, 
And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas. 

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich : Miracles. 



TWILIGHT 



Jewels that welter like great fallen suns! 

The living heat that smolders in deep rubies, 

The endless April of cool emeralds 

And chrysophrase within whose heart the sky 

Kisses the sea! The sullen mystery 

Of opals holding captive sunsets past! 

And diamonds fashioned from the frozen souls 

Of lilies once alive. 

— Ridgeley Torrence : El Dorado. 



[90] 



[hat welter like great fallen suns! 
-^,,* a uhe living neat that smolders in deep ruble*, , _„ 

afe itoitf flfeflfWft&f^ftf'h oo to enoieiilaM 

rbiw bciiraffisftrjwr marwft 

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aiswoft 0jih ,, babnehBg .sniqul 






No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, 
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us. 

— Thomas Moore : Come O'er the Sea. 



92 



Hydras of emerald and blue 

Were part of swaying tapestries. 

Whose woof from ivies of the seas 
Stole each inquietude of hue. 

— George Sterling : The House of Orchids, 

With the burial of the Sovereign of Time and Light 
there came a soul-enchanting change. In the West the 
world was shut with a golden bar ; its portals, closed with 
portieres of clouds; its altars, set about with filigrees of 
gold and veiled with curtains of rose and of pearl, fibered 
with shades of orange and intermingled with yellow, red 
and brown. In the zenith twin beams, delicate and fragile, 
met and kissed and embraced and dissolved, consumed 
by the rapture of their own passion. Here and there a 
few lights still lingered, "dim, hovering on the skirts of 
space". The brilliancies changed to palors touching sky 
and cloud with soft and tender hues. The splendors 
melted into dissolving, expiring fires; the ebbing rays, 
into chastened afterglows, clinging with trembling, atten- 
uated tendrils to vanishing coronals of air. 

About the fir-purpled slopes gathered omens of oblivion. 
The hills were sepulchers of dying splendors. The moun- 
tain-peaks, late wrapped in rose and pink, and hued with 
crimson, were shadow-edged, compassed by mystery and 
solitude, and haunted with strange, vague forms. The 
twilight slowly robbed the clouds of glory. The sky be- 
came a bloomy purple, broken here and there with patches 
of blended peace and flame, darkening near the horizon 
into a velvety pall. Other preludes of the night were not 
wanting. And yet there hung over and about every- 
thing — mountain, sky and cloud— a fine serenity, a tran- 
quilizing glory, like the benignity of Omniscience. 

There was a holy hush. The forest's hymn was staid. 

Everything seems to settle in conscious repose. The winds breathe 
gently or are wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy and 
luminous and combed out fine on the edges. 

John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 

[93 1 



We are back in the youth and wonder of the world. Here is silence. 
Here is peace. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



The light, subdued and soft. A serene and utter peace 
had fallen — a silence touched with^ tenderness — unbroken 
save by bird-call and water-fall, and they, half-hushed 
and prayerful. The very atmosphere was hallowed; the 
winds, quieting. A fragment of God's changeless calm 
enveloped all — the pause that comes between the day 
and night, an hour of equal kin to both; a segment filled 
with mystery-spells and hints of wondrous, unguessed 
things ; a moment of worship and of adoration, of worship 
deep and sweet as silence, of adoration profound and 
reverent as unsaid prayer — when silence speaks to silence, 
and the heart of things and of men beats in rhythm with 
the heart of the Infinite — the one sweet moment in which 
man is pure enough to be God's medium and in which it 
is easy to be clean of soul; a cup filled with peace and 
inspiration, pressed in mercy to man's dry lips. 

We stood bedreamed, yet acutely conscious, our souls 
answering to the vibrations of the hour and scene as from 
a touch divine. 

But an hour like that could not abide. The day was 
already done. The night was come. Its falling shadows 
broke the spell. We had lived a glorious, soul-filled day. 
Throughout its every hour Nature's wondrous voices had 
held for us "a varied language", and we had heard and 
almost understood. Depth, heighth, space, color, mystery 
and calm had wrought in us their will. 



How still it is! Dear God, I hardly dare 
To breathe. 

— Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand 

Canyon of Arizona. 

[94] 



This radiant pomp of sun and star, 
Thrones that were, and worlds that are. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson : Woodnotes. 



95 




,'rabnc rnrfl -a 







/ live not in myself, but I become 
Portion of that around me; and to me 
High mountains are a feeling. 

— Lord Byron : Childe Harold. 



98 



NIGHT 



The sweet dusk deepens and majestic night — 
Mother of dreams and sleep — sinks silently 
Upon the land; the tide steals in, and where 
The ripples dance I watch the red stars write 
In fiery lines Gods message to the sea. 

— Herbert Bashford ; Sunset. 



[100] 



The sweet dusk deepens and majestic nigh 
Mother of dreams and sleep — sirt 

.'TrSiil^b^toSrtteB brie; anie- P wo gnuwz- 






[101] 



How like a queen comes forth the lonely moon 



Walking in beauty to her midnight throne! 

— George Croly : Diana. 



[ 102 



The moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor paving the 
turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet 
on the tents in which we were to sleep. 

— John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. 



Before the twilight could deepen into night, the moon 
— changeful nurseling of our little, space-flung world — 
swung out of the eastern mountains and assumed do- 
minion. 

We made a bed beneath the pines, of fir and hemlock 
boughs, and stretched ourselves to rest and dreams. 
Immediately about and surrounding us the gloom inten- 
sified until it became obscure, preternatural and mys- 
terious, filled with whimsical, fantastic forms and peopled 
with ludicrous, misshapen, distorted apparitions. But 
outside our immediate environment beyond the trees the 
light fell, soft and meditative, and along the forest's edge 
phantom shadows and quivering moonbeams met and 
mingled, danced hand in hand, and leaped and romped 
together. 

In the ravines below, the congregating waters, fresh 
from the melted snows above, whispered intermittent 
and broken confidences of expectant, far-away journey- 
ings by brook and creek and river and sea and cloud, ere 
they returned to wrap again in virgin white the bosom of 
the mountains that long had held them; and in the dis- 
tance the moon-dimmed cliffs, like ghostly sentinels, kept 
silent ward and calm but wakeful vigil. 



We made our beds beneath a grand old Sitka spruce five feet in 
diameter, whose broad, wing-like branches were outspread immediately 
above our heads. The night picture as I stood back to see it in the fire- 
light was this one great tree, relieved against the gloom of the woods 
back of it, the light on the low branches revealing the shining needles, 
the brown, sturdy trunk grasping an outswelling mossy bank, and a 
fringe of illuminated bushes within a few feet of the tree with the fire- 
light on the tips of the sprays. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 

[ 103] 



The scraggy pines anchored in the rocky fissures were so dwarfed 
and shorn by storm-winds that you might walk over their tops. 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 



Lulled by the scent of broken fir and hemlock, the sigh 
of the pines and the tongueless tattle of journeying waters, 
we fell asleep, and slept until the moon had climbed and 
passed the zenith of its course and hung midway in the 
upper arc of the western sky. Then we awoke, arose and 
girded ourselves, and begun the final ascent of the moun- 
tain. Our goal was the crest of its loftiest pinnacle, that 
we might from thence behold the miracle of the making 
of a morning and see the glory of a Siskiyou sunrise. 

At times the way was shadowy and indistinct, and the 
ascent so steep that the exertion of climbing took our 
breath; our trembling knees refused our weight and we 
fell and lay prone upon the mountainside until breath 
and strength returned ; then we clambered on. 

At other times we walked almost erect, up easy ascents 
and over comparatively level stretches, picking our way 
among rocks and boulders and between gnarled and 
stunted firs, crooked and bent by mountain winds and 
the weight of winter snows. 

My companion, younger and lither of form, and more 
accustomed to mountain climbing, outran me, and, paus- 
ing now and then, called down to me from the shadows. 
In the hushed and noiseless night his voice fell strange 
and loud and weird. The hills would catch it up and 



Several large Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was 
sheltered, bowing solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpret- 
ing the very words of the storm, while accepting its wildest onsets with 
passionate exhilaration. The lions were feeding. 

— John Muir : The Mountains of California. 

\ 104 1 
















o 
o 



C 



cfl 
C 

u 






o 



Copyright, E. S. Curtis. 



105 



One of the last outposts of the forest below the line of eternal 
snow. 

— John H. Williams : The Mountain That Was God. 



106 



. . . Fowls in their clay nests were couch' d 
And now wild beasts come forth, the woods to roam. 

— John Milton : Paradise Lost. 



change and multiply it until the whole mountainside and 
every nook and alcove seemed peopled with gabbling, 
jibbering entities, invisible and uncanny. 

Sometimes he would pause and stand far above me on 
some projecting ledge in a cleared space in the moonlight; 
his form, silhouetted against the sky, would assume gro- 
tesque proportions and become magnified and raised in 
stature until he towered a gigantic Druid, typical of the 
shimmery, deceptive night and its wild, wierd and mystical 
environment. 

After two hours of toil and climb we reached the snow- 
line, and entered a scene of pallid, ghostly beauty — a 
realm of witchery and of awe. It was as though we had 
reached the world's limits and were standing upon the 
linked, but unfused, edge of time and space. The beauty, 
the sublimity and the wonder enthralled; immensity com- 
panioned and encompassed; the illimitable and the un- 
known environed us. Infinity pressed so close about us 
that we could have touched it with our awe-white hands. 
We could hear the whisper of Mystery's muted lips and 
feel the throb, of Fear's stilled pulse. 

The call of the All-Great was in the air. Across the 
night's roofless, far-distant dome, He had written His 
"I am", and set with His own sure hands amid the firma- 
ment's soundless solitudes His signature forever. 



This was that earth of which we have heard, made out of chaos and 
old night. 

— Henry David Thoreau : The Maine Woods. 

f 107 1 



The wind breathed soft as lovers sigh, 
And oft renew d, seem'd oft to die, 
With breathless pause between. 

— Sir Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles. 



Before and amid it all, we stood in utter nakedness of 
soul, feeling the surge of inspiration, vast and inchoate, 

"Yearning to reach t4ie cosmic wires . 
That flash Infinity's desires." 

Language cannot describe, it can only suggest, what 
we beheld or what we felt — its witchery or its awe : 

A white, up-stretched waste of incrusted, scintillating 
snow, interspersed with the dark, deep green of fir trees, 
immeshed and half-submerged, now motionless, now 
stirred with "the borrowed breath of vagrant winds"; 

The pensive, diffused moonlight; 

The dim and distant forest line's alternating tremor of 
light and shade — wavery and uncertain; 

The shadowy, imaginary configurations of cliff and crag 
and peak; 

Unnatural, half-formed shapes in ravines and valleys, 
wombed in blackness ; 

The shrouded, indeterminate mountains; 

The haunting silence and the profound calm, absolute 
and impenetrable; 

The bended, concaved heavens — world-sown, star-set — 
filled with sparkling fixities and zoned by dread immen- 
sities ; 

The canopied firmament — an unwalled temple, vast 
and roofless, diamond-strung and sapphire-crowned, lumi- 
nous with suns and flame-set spheres — burning crucibles 
of energy and heat; 



The glorious hosts of light 
Walk the dark hemisphere . . , 
All through her silent watches, gliding slow, 
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens and go. 
— William Cullen Bryant : Hymn to the North Star. 

[108] 



- 
rrid oft to 
■use between. 

er Scott : Lord of the Isles. 



11, we stood in utter nakedness of 
of inspiration, vast and incho 

ig to reach ths-jx>smic wires . 
h Infinity's desires." 

mot describe, it can only suggest, what 
what we felt — its witchery or its awe : 
.sp-stretched waste of incrusted, scintillating 
rspersed with the dark, deep green of fir trees, 
and half-submerged, now motionless, now 
with "the borrowed breath of vagrant winds"; 
le pensive, diffused moonlight; 
The dim and distant forest line's alternating tremor of 

2 ■■g«bett8fitez-,'i- .ia^3$^n§sH&b-,;)2-qu .ajinV A" 

briBH©rffefflakjtv,«g3iiria%3oaffl55Tg:-qs3b fMk B8tofi;Jllifiban§q£E8gi 
^bs^qjg^ prii' rbiw banicte won .ezalnoborn won t b3§i3mdu2-ilBrI 

Unnatural, rv .-.aw jnsiasy 

wombed in bl 
The shrouded, ; 
The. haunting 
and imp 

The be. et — 

filled with spark; nmen- 

sities ; 
The cano; an unwalled temple, vast 

jfless, diamond-strung and sapphire-crowned, lumi- 
vith suns and flame-set spheres — burning crucibl 
ind heat; 



<rious hosts of light 

hemisphere . 
■r silent watches, glid- 
>me, and 

LEI 



901} 







- M 



For the white glory overawes me; 
The crystal terror of the seer 
Of Chebar s vision blinds me here. 

— John G. Whittier : The Pageant. 



10 



Night .... follows . . with her diadem of stars, 
bright creatures! How they gleam like spirits through the shadows of 
innumerable eyes from their thrones in the boundless depths of heaven. 
— Thomas Carlisle : Letter to Jane Welsh. 



The Milky Way, stooping down from out the zenith — 
a great livid stream in the infinite — with its thousand 
million suns creeping in dim procession like white-robed 
specters in a way of dreams, or parading in ostentatious 
show, "a jostling crowd in radiant disarray" ; 
The stupendous drama of the unscrolled sky : 

Its vast and star-lit stage framed in eternal arches, 
set with star-encircled suns and trembling irre- 
solvable nebulae, with unutterable splendor of 
scenery, stretching afar, down dim and distant 
aisles of light — 
Its radiant rarities — 
Its trembling, bright amazements — 
Its pomp and pageantry — 
Its processions and its marches — 
Its gigantic movements — 

Its troop of actors — stars, treble and quadruple, com- 
posed of revolving suns, gowned in green and red 
and yellow robes — flaming constellations— globes 
of living fire, in effulgent garb — veiled and silent 
sisters, ' nebulae-ringed and spiral-crowned — pallid 
specters and mysterious apparitions — lordly, con- 
quering suns, holding in their train chained and 
captive worlds, with retinues of humble, worship- 



Satellites circle round their primaries, planets wheel in obedience to 
the behest of their parent suns, comets under the same potent spell 
wing their fiery flight through space. 

The sun himself, upon whose majestic court hundreds of bright 
attendants wait, is subjected in turn to the influence of his mighty 
brethren, and rolls at their bidding along his appointed course. 

— Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. 



_ 



This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till towards the centre set the starry tides, 
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets. 

— Alfred Tennyson : The Princess. 



ping satellites — choruses of singing spheres — im- 
pulsive, lawless meteors and knights-errant comets 
wrapped in clouds of cosmic fire — 

Its succession of primordial, vital acts — 

Its fantasies — 

Its bombastes furiosoes — 

Its extravangazas — 

Its phantasmagorias — 

Its crysmal harmonies and inaudible celestial mel- 
odies — 

Its mad dances of incalculable forces — 

Its emotional paeans — 

Its dirges and its jubilates — 

Its undressed sincerity — 

Its convulsing, consuming passions — 

Its abysmal loves — 

Its cataclysmic tragedies with their pangs and 
agonies, and the birth and death of worlds — 

Its suns in accouchment; 
The terror and the dreadfulness of stellar space : 

Its leagues of emptiness — 

Its colossal areas — 

Its impalpable reaches — 

Its unbridgeable immensities — 



A hoary deep, a dark 
Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
Without dimensions, where length, breadth, and height, 
And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 

— John Milton : Paradise Lost. 

I H2] 



I 

The Pr>. 



—choruses of singing spheres — ii 
•.vless meteors and knights-errant comets 
clouds of cosmic fire — 
on of primordial, vital acts — 
s — 
wastes furiosoe.^ 
. rtravangazas — 
[ts phantasmagorias — 

[ts crysmal harmonies and inaudible celestial mel- 
odies — 
[ts mad dances of incalculable forces — 
[ts emotional paeans — 
Its dirges and its jubilates 

[tsundress. .™I akfc^bhdnU" 

[ts con\ 

: 

: 
. 

: 
mpalpal 

[ts unbridgeable immensities — 



A hoary deep, a dark 
.itable ocean, without bound, 
\out dimensions, where length, brc 
And time, and place, are lost; where 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, h 
xal anarchy, amidst the r. 
■ars, and by 

[HI] 



We are above the empty babble of the world — uplifted into 
the great silence. Before us is an illimitable expanse of wonder 
that reaches to the horizon, an expanse that ends — yet ends 
not. The crags and peaks and pinnacles recede and dissolve 
till at last the sky receives them as one substance with itself 
— gray into gray, shadow into shadow. Let us be reverent and 
still on the lofty summit: Here is a place where the soul may 
touch the passion of the infinite. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



14] 



Vast assemblages of stars streaming far into space. 

Nor are these star-clusters the greatest marvels of the Milky Way. 
It is dotted with white spots. . . . vast oceans of flaming gas 
. . . . hanging all together isolated in space, while they spread 
their huge billows over countless millions of miles. 

— Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. 



Its incomprehensible voids — vast and unknowable — 

Its infinity and its illimitability — 

Its awful scope — 

Its dread import — 

Its stupendous, impossible depths — 

Its shoreless, starless seas — 

Its soundless solitudes — 

Its precipices of astonishment and of fright — 

Its gateless gardens — 

Its unbarred doors of wonder — 

Its swing of worlds and whirl of planets and march 

of endless systems — 
Its cloistered fires and dimmed and burned-out 

stars — 
Its tragedies of dissolving worlds — 
Its eclipse of suns — 
Its infinitude of august and sacred horrors. 



Everywhere, everywhere, in the zenith, at the nadir, in front, behind, 
above, below, in the heights, in the depths, looms the formidable dark- 
ness of the Infinite. 

The ensemble of all this passes the bounds of chimera and is over- 
whelming in its reality. A madman could not have dreamed it, a genius 
could not have imagined it. All this is a unity. And I am part of it. 

— Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. 

[115] 



Face to face with the infinitude of God, — alone where mortal footstep 
has never trod, where presence there has never been, save that of the ever 
omnipresent Creator and the spirits which pass and repass, ascending 
and descending the ladder of vision which bridges the chasm between 
heaven and earth, as they go and come, ministering to the heirs of 
salvation. 

— Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. 



Standing there amid the night, the snow-mantled 
silence and the dream-dim solitudes — the charm and 
witchery, the amazement and the wonder, the mystery 
and the awe of it all — 

"The spheres beneath His fingers circling free", 

we felt and knew what Wordsworth felt and knew when 
he wrote this great acknowledgment : 

" * * I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things". 



The apparitions of the universe will continue to loom. 
The unsoundable will remain before you in its entirety. 
Beyond the visible the invisible, beyond the invisible, the unknown. 
— Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. 

Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man; 
Man, turning from his God brings endless night. 

— Edward Young : Night Thoughts. 

\ 1161 



I footstep 

has never bee 4 the ever 

as, ascending 

hich bridges the chasm between 

inistering to the heirs of 

The Romance of Astronomy. 



amid the night, the snow-mantled 
the dream-dim solitudes — the charm and 
the amazement and the wonder, the mystery 
/e of it all — 

"The spheres beneath His fingers circling free", 

it and knew what. Wordsworth felt and knew when 
rote this great acknowledgment : 

.'ViH IshtesbO rbiW bsqqiT ^Bs^bsaariiH e'bnfilrfaA jM" 

A presence 
Ot 

Of SOf. 

Wh 

An- 



Anci 



The apparitions of the universe will continue to lot 
indable will remain before you in its 
the visible the invisible, beyond the 

— Victor Hugo : Thu 

rom the sun. brings night 
irning from his God brings endle 

— Edward Yoi 



The atmosphere itself became one mass of color — a fine 
translucent purple haze, in which the islands with softened 
outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around 
the base of each of them as a fitting border. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 



118 



BEFORE THE DAWN 



The Morning-stars 

are dumb 

With trembling bright amazement; and the Dawn 
Steals through the glimmering pines with naked feet, 
Her hand upon her lips, to look on thee. 

Turn to the East, and show upon thy breast 
The mightiest marvel in the realm of Time! 

— Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand 

Canyon of Arizona. 



[ 120 



rning-stan 

are dumb- 

■ h trembling bright amazement; and the Dawn 
Steals through the glimmering pines with naked feet, 
Her hand upon her lips, to look on thee. 

."jimrnuS.sfto lo.eslosnai^.bns z\Yi\D sriT" 
Turn to the md she 

The mightiest ma 



[I«] 



Below were three horizontal belts of purple edged with gold, 
while a vividly defined, spreading fan of flame streamed up- 
ward across the purple bars and faded in a feathery edge of 
dull red. 

-John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 



122 



Sit here on the basalt ranges 

Where twisted hills betray 
The seat of the world-old forces 

Who wrestled here one day. 
— Ralph Waldo Emerson : May Morning. 



Another short but clambering climb and we stood 
among the cliffs and pinnacles of the summit. We were 
none too soon, for the moon, even as we attained them, 
was surrendering to the night. Its empery was over. Its 
sovereignty, gone. The far-away peaks of the distant 
Coast Range, were reaching their arms, impatient to give 
it sepulcher. For a moment it hung above them, a molten, 
suspended disc, reluctant, but regal; then suddenly 
dropped into their bosom — gone in an instant as if fallen 
into a grave. Its light paled and waned, faded and dis- 
solved, absorbed by the deepening shadows, eaten by the 
blackness of the night. 

Things grew strange and indistinct. The crags be- 
came apparitions. The mountains disappeared. The 
ranges were lost in oblivion; wrapped in the darkness 
and solitude of an isolation deep and weird; enveloped 
in a silence absolute and profound, vast and abysmal. 
There was no sound ; no cry of bird ; or murmur of insect ; 
no sigh of pine or fir. The wind itself was motionless, its 
breath hushed in lonesomeness, stayed by dread. The 
darkness chilled. The isolation oppressed. The silence 
hurt. But only for a moment. The miracle of morning 
was at hand. We were entangled only in the remnant of 
the night. 



And suddenly the moon withdraws 



And to her sombre cavern flies, 
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze. 

— Oscar Wilde : La Fruite de la Luna. 



123 



Giant forms molded themselves from darkness into light. 

— John L. Stoddard : Switzerland. 



Its triumph, though black and intense, was brief. It 
could not hold the citadels it had captured. The soldiers 
of the dawn were already marshaling and soon would be 
marching to the rescue. As yet they could neither be 
seen nor heard. But there was a prescience in the air, a 
telepathy that our souls could not misinterpret. The 
news, though impalpable and intangible, was too good to 
be suppressed. The birds sensed it and told the secret 
to one another in subdued chirps and confidential twit- 
terings. The wind, overhearing, caught again its sus- 
pended breath, whispered the message among the cliffs 
and bade the sullen, somber crags be glad. 

In the East dim, timorous premonitions were appearing. 
At first, only virginal cognitions — beginnings, ethereal 
and evanescent; intimations, tremulous and elusive, and 
half-formed timidities; then, faint vibrations,, silvery 
threads of gossamere, and trembling thistle-downs of 
shell- white light; then, hints of glimmering colors; pris- 
matic flashes, harmonic salutations, changing from white 
to gold and from gold to crimson; then, roseate chameleon 
hues, lustrous coils of crystal air, and rings of vari-colored 
filaments shot through with fire; quivering, leaping 
tongues of yellow, red and green, streaking the retreating 
gloom with glow, transmuting darkness into pearl, hang- 



The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, 
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light. 

— William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet. 

[124] 



ght. 
Stoddard : Switzerland. 



ck and intense, was brief. It 
le citadels it had captured. The soldiers 
ere already marshaling and soon would be 
Lhe rescue. As yet they could neither be 
d. But there was a pre in the air, a 

that our souls could not misinterpi "he 

new .igh impalpable and intangible, was too good to 

be suppressed. The birds sensed it and told the secret 
another in subdued chirps and confidential twit- 
terings. The wind, overhearing, caught again its sus- 

^jb^arfnia^yiesfffifil £fyh<mmam <*HPPfl»ke cliffs 

the su ^ibbR3efmgs'inc>/ 

In the East di . mg. 

At firs 
and ev 

threads of % of 

!l-whit is- 

matic ' lite 

to;. .-n;the hameleon 

es, lustrous coi nd rings of vari-colored 

filaments shot through with fire; quivering, leaping 
tongues of yellow, red and green, streaking the retreating 
gloom with glow, transmuting darkness into pearl, hang- 






[AM IAKESP1 diet. 

m 

i 



And morning, faintly touched with, quivering fire, 

Leans on the summits of the hills. 

— William Roscoe : Poems and Essays. 



126 



Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is up rolled; 
To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold 

Is builded 

— Sidney Lanier : Sunrise. 



ing the lintels of the dawn with entwined chains of jewels, 
tingeing the cloud-work of the sky with blaze of opal and 
flame of ruby, sending wind-whipped couriers of light to 
the zenith's battalious heighths, waking the wonder-chil- 
dren of the heavens. 

But these glyptic glories, bewitching and resplendent 
as they were, were but the frontier-lights of grander 
effulgencies — trial-fires, kindled on the untrodden brink 
of the morn's impending edge. The day's returning 
empire was not yet come. Its Lord was still invisible, 
but preparations were making. The curtains of the night 
were parted. 

The sky was close-writ with prophecy. The coronal 
robes were weaving. The altar candles were lighting. 
The throne-room was being made ready. But the palace 
gates were not yet open. Across them still were bolts 
and rods and bars — bolts of burnished steel, rods of ham- 
mered brass and bars of turquoise and of gold — keeping 
the imprisoned glories back, staying the virgin-footed, 
silent-sandaled morning until the King should come. 

There was, however, no delay. For no sovereign ever 
measured time with the accuracy of this one. In all his 
train there was no laggard. Every moment his coming 
became more imminent; the preparations, more decisive. 
The golden glimmers waxed into rose-crowned splendors. 



Miles of enameled pink and gold 

Incrust the blue of space, 
While bands of amethyst enfold 
Each mountain's massive base. 
— John L. Stoddard : Sunrise in the Selkirks. 



127 



Hues of the rich unfolding morn, 
That, ere the glorious sun be born, 
By some soft touch invisible 
Around his path are taught to swell. 

— John Keble : The Christian Year. 



The belts of color deepened. The crystal waves became 
scarlet. The peaks and cliffs grew crimson. 

We stood, perched among the crags, expectant; quiv- 
ering with anticipation. Suddenly there came a change, 
significant and instant as an electric touch. The rapture 
became visible. We felt the thrill and wonderment of a 
scene beyond the imagery of the senses. The East was 
one great altar, fused into molten unity. The sky, a vast 
elysium of visual ecstasy. The heavens, a panorama of 
pictured pomp and prodigality — one grand crescendo of 
form and color, breaking into gushes of excesses, oriflammes 
of rapture, apogees of exultation, tumults of alleluiahs, 
and repercussions of delight. 

Then, in the midst of it all, in a single, luminous instant, 
happened the supreme miracle — the thing we had climbed 
the mountain to look upon. The gates of dawn were 
burst asunder, breaking the bolts and bars that held them, 
into bits of amethyst and fragmentary prisms, and through 
their shattered, jasper portals leaped the Sun — the resur- 
rected King — followed by jubilees of glorias ; outbursts of 
sublimity, set with the imprint of divinity, enameling 
everything with a bewildering, bewitching beauty — 
heaven-begotten, mountain-born — tipping the ethered 



The music trembled with an inward thrill 
Of bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave 

Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until 
The hushed air shivered with the throb it gave, 

Then poising for a moment it stood still, 
And sank and rose again, to burst in spray 

That wandered into silence far away. 
— James Russell Lowell : A Legend of Brittany. 



128 



I 

swell. 

3LE : The Q Year. 



deepened. The^- crystal waves became 
and cliffs grew crimson. 

imong the crags, expectant; quiv- 

on. Suddenly there came a change, 

unt as an electric touch. The rapture 

We felt the thrill and wonderment of a 

»e imagery of the senses. The East was 

used into molten unity. The sky, a vast 

sual ecstasy. The heavens, a panorama of 

rap and prodigality — one grand crescendo of 

olor, breaking into gushes of excesses, oriflammes 

ipogees of exultation, tumults of alleluiahs, 

sssions of delight. 

led the su^bnuog boe ^70*4 to e-abnoWv. - climbed 

mountair 1 were 

isunder, em, 
intobk 

ir shattered, ■ 

rsts of 

sublimity. ,ng 

everything with a bewil' beauty — : 

heaven-begotten, rhered 



music t, an inward thrill 

'. its oivn grandeur: wave on ■ 
Its flood of mellow thunder re 
ed with the t. 
r a moment it 
d sank and rose again, to burst in spray 
ndered into silence far a 



IWI] 



A gust of wind disputes the water s way, hurling, tossing, 
shattering and strewing the splendor in meteoric streams, 
ruined nebulae, bursting constellations. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 



130] 



Behold the kingly day now leaps 
The eastern wall of earth with sword in hand, 
Clad in flowing robe of mellow light, 
Like to a king that has regain d his throne. 

— Joaquin Miller : Ina. 

Morn 
Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand 
Unbarred the gates of light. 

— John Milton : Paradise Lost. 



peaks of Crater Lake — Diamond, Union, Scott and 
Thielson — with celestial fire, adorning Wagner and Mc- 
Loughlin with air-swung aquarelles, filling and over-run- 
ning sensation's high-raised brim. 

We could not restrain ourselves. We cried aloud and 
shouted in an ecstasy of delight. We were in the realiza- 
tion of an emancipated, exalted moment, and felt again 
the joy of childhood's hour, the ecstasy we knew before 
our lives had held a wrong. 

And yet, notwithstanding our elated mood and the 
soul-squandering scene that produced it, there were within 
us deeper soundings of emotion than we then were con- 
scious of — soul-deeps of which we did not know. But 
knowledge of them was now to be ours. They were about 
to be touched and awakened as by a call from the Infinite. 
We had but to turn to the right and the wonder-spell 
was upon us. 



'Tis done, — the morning miracle of light, — 
The resurrection of the world of hues 
That die with dark, and daily rise again 
With every rising of the splendid Sun! 

— Henry Van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand 

Canyon of Arizona. 

The great world's altar-stairs, 
That slope thro' darkness up to God. 

— Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam. 



131 ] 



And all between is cleft 
And carved into a hundred curving miles 
Of unimagined architecture! Tombs, 
Temples, and colonnades are neighbored there 
By fortresses that Titans might defend, 
And amphitheaters where Gods might strive. 
Cathedrals, buttressed with unnumbered tiers 
Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky 
A single spire of marble pure as snow; 
And huge aerial palaces arise 
Like mountains built of unconsuming flame. 
Along the weathered walls, or standing far 
In riven valleys where no foot may tread, 
Are lonely pillars, and tall monuments 
Of perished aeons and forgotten things. 

Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand 

Canyon of Arizona. 



132 



2 hundred curving 
mag ined architecture! 1 

jnnades are neigh 
'esses that Titans might i 
amphitheaters where Gods might sir 
rats, buttressed with unnumbered tiers 
Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky 
A si 

And huy 
Like mountaii 
Along the w 



"and 






Domes and towers and stupendous walls. 



Bastions sublime, cliffs inaccessible. 

— Geo. Sterling : Yosemite. 



[ 134 



SUNRISE 



Be still, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath 

To see the vital flood of radiance leap 

Across the chasm; and crest the farthest rim 

Of alabaster with a glistening white 

Rampart of pearl; and flowing down by walls 

Of changeful opal, deepen into gold 

Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmaline, 

Crimson of garnet, green and gray of jade, 

Purple of amethyst, and ruby red, 

Beryl, and sard, and royal porphyry; 

Until the cataract of color breaks. 

— Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand 

Canyon of Arizona. 



136 



II, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath 
To see the vital flood of radiance leap 
Across the chasm; and crest the farthest rim 
Of alabaster with a glistening white 

Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmalv. ^ ? - 3r ^ 

Crimson of go 

p. 

■ 

■and 
ona. 



\U ] I 



From the mingled strength of shade and light 
A new creation rises to my sight 
Such heavenly figures from his pencil flow, 
So warm with light his blended colors glow. 

— Lord Byron : Monody on the 
Death of Sheridan. 



138] 



The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid 
the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most 
telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 



There, seventy miles away, towered Shasta, granite- 
founded, glacier-ploughed, summit-lifted — cloud wrapped, 
mist-mantled, snow-crested Shasta — shouldering out the 
sky; gleaming above the clouds in primal grandeur; an 
island in a sapphire sea ; a far-flung, space-throned wonder, 
panoplied in glory. 

For a moment it seemed a sculptured vision; an Hima- 
laya of the air; a luminous, majestic fantasy; an appari- 
tion woven of the morning's purple bloom and changing 
tides ; — then, a living entity, palpable and real ; a creature 
vast and superlative; a goddess of the sky, clad in folds 
of shimmering light, veiled in filmy, airy nothings, 
attended by troupes of courtesying, dancing phantoms 
whimsical as dreams. 

An instant later, breaking through the thinned and 
tattered lilac films, it stood exposed in natal nakedness, 
disrobed of shadows, limned in the crystal air, clear-cut 
and vivid ; girth, aflame with crunes of rubies and crumb- 
ling avalanches of gold; shoulders, scintillant with ame- 
thysts and with diamonds; breasts, lustrous and irrides- 
cent with mother-of -pearls and with opals; brow, re- 
splendent with white-crowned magnificence; presence t 
regal with the solemnity of isolation, sublime with the 
sovereignty of silence. 

The beauty, the grandeur, the sublimity and the pri- 
malness of the scene entranced us. Our every faculty was 



The glory of Him who 
Hung His masonry pendant on naught, when the world He created. 
— Henry W. Longfellow : The Children of 

the Lord's Supper. 

[139] 



On certain portions of our globe Almighty God has set a special 
imprint of divinity. 

— John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. 



enthralled, lost in wonder, hushed in awe. We could not 
speak, we could not move. Emotion's urn was too full. 
Our every breath became a prayer. A sense of the vital- 
ness of the spiritual and of the Divine Essence that lies 
at the heart of all created things was upon us. The 
breaths of angels brushed our lips. We could hear their 
pulsing pinions and feel the ah-ness of their presence. It 
was like a moment singled out of time. All-forever was 
in it. Speech, could it have been uttered, would have 
been a profanation; lip worship, a sacrilege. 

At the rising of the sun we had cried aloud our exultant 
admiration. But now the effect was different. Sublimer 
glories were about us. Heaven's altars, before us. The 
unplummable depths were touched, and our awed souls 
stilled into wordless worship. An adoration profound and 
primal as the thing we looked upon possessed us. It was 
as though we stood in the workshop of the Almighty — 
the presence of the Master Workman, near and imminent. 
Whisperings of Him were about us everywhere — of Him 
who builds of monads and of worlds; who moulds the 
sands and fashions suns; who forms the flower, so fragile 
that a breath will wither; sprinkles space with planets, 
sows the heavens with stars, and strews the infinitudes 
with constellations; of Him "who builds, yet makes no 
chips, no din"; at whose rescript the vast and endless 

Though Etna crumble and the dark seas rise 
Sowing the uplands with their sterile brine, 
Still shall the soul descry with wistful eyes 
Sicilian headlands bright with flower and fruit; 
Still shall she hear, though all earth's lips be mute, 
Sicilian music in the morning skies. 

— Louis V. Ledoux : A Threnody. 

f 140 1 



/ saw the twinkle of white feet, 

I saw the flash of robes descending. 

-James Russell Lowell : Hebe. 



141 



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Like warp and woof all destinies 

Are woven fast, 
Linked in sympathy like the keys 

Of an organ vast. 
Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; 

Break but one 
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 

Through all will run. 

— John G. Whittier : My Soul And I . 



44 



Cold, calm and harmless though they now appear, the time has 
been when they contained a molten mass which needed but a throb 
of earth's uneasy heart to light the heavens with an angry glare and 
cover the adjoining plains with floods of fire. 

— John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. 

universe moves in order and at whose word its infinites- 
imal "atoms march in tune". 

The dawn we looked upon seemed His fresh act; the 
sky, His recent handiwork; the clouds, new-fashioned by 
His fingers; the gleaming mountain, a colossal fragment 
in the architecture of the world, set by His sure hands in 
the steeps of heaven — a sentinel at the cycle-bolted gates 
of time and space. 

Eternity itself was on it; the ineff ability and the irre- 
vocableness of the Infinite, about it; — on and about it as 
they were in the chaos-conquered hour, when from the 
void the Cosmos came with its harmony of worlds and 
concert of systems. 

As we contemplated the awe-engirded, soul-soliciting 
spectacle, the reverence and the homage of the wonder- 
woven spell deepened and intensified. 

Below us lay a chaos of fir-and-pine-walled hills, with 
green-waved, shadowy slopes, from which towered mam- 
moth trees in forests primeval, the day-break glittering 
through them. Between the hills, a mixture of light and 
darkness; deep and narrow valleys filled with a mass of 
heaving, tumbling, swimming vapors, condensing where 
the valleys widened, into surging, white-lipped seas of 
mist. 

A pine tree standeth lonely 

On a northern mountain s height. 
It sleeps, while round it is folded 

A mantle of snowy white. 
It is dreaming of a palm tree 

In a far-off Orient land 
Which lonely and silently waiteth 

In the desert's burning sand. 

— Heinrich Heine : Book of Song. 

\ 145 1 



Glorious landscapes, . . . multitudes of new mountains, 
. . . towering in glorious array, . . . serene, majestic, snow- 
laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges ... a glory-day of 
admission into a realm of wonders. 

— John Muir : My First Summer in The Sierra. 

In the distance, the river Bear — vine-fringed, bowlder- 
bordered — winding in and out through woods and orchards 
a narrow, silvery ribbon, leaping and laughing on its way 
to join the troubled waters of the Rogue. 

Above the hills, but still beneath us, intervening be- 
tween us and the sky-cleaving peaks of Crater Lake and 
of Wagoner, Grizzly, McLoughlin and Shasta, rose mo- 
tionless billows of less lofty mountains, — roll after roll, 
range on range — some built of centuried granite, massive, 
formidable and superb ; others with shattered walls, rock- 
sundered sides, and ragged, wild-piled cliffs, culminating 
in cataclysmic crags and towers; in pinnacles, storm- riven 
and lightning-scarred; in turrets, glory-touched; and 
flame- tipped minarets. 

Above and about us hung an empire of silence — an 
aerial, fanciful universe, self-lifted, self-upheld, so close 
that we, ourselves, seemed involved in its liquid depths, 
afloat on its waterless seas, immersed in its living splendors 
— a world of chimeras and of dreams, of illusions and of 
imagery, a masterpiece of awe. 

There were fleets of shadowy, half-visible barks; con- 
voys of argosies and of galleons; seas of crystal, tideless 
liquid ; islands of jasper and of onyx ; forts, with bastions 
of emerald and parapets of porphyry, waving banners of 



Cities lift their phantom walls and towers, touched with eternal 
colors — aureate, carmine, cerulean. Baalbec and Bagdad and Baby- 
lon shimmer in phantom beauty on the far horizon. 

— Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 

[146] 



r , 

r r<x. 



er Bear — vine-fringed, bowlder- 

-■ ugh woods and orchards 

raping and laughing on its way 

^rs of the Rogue. 

but still beneath us, intervening be- 

:y-cleaving pc Crater Lake and- 

;er, Grizzly, K4cLoughlin and Shasta, rose mo- 

illows of less lofty moi 

range — some built of ce granite, massive, 

•able and others with si 

:ed sides, and ragged, wild-pik . culm 

in cataclysmic crags and towers; in pinnacles, storm-riven 
J lightning-scarred; in turrets, glory-touched; and 
tipped minarets. 
>ve and al -ilence 

- 

td of 

less 

h bastions 

, waving s of 



Cities lift their phantom rnal 

carmin iiby- 
on the far I 

— Edwin Mars. rful. 



In Nature's infinite book of secrecy 
A little I can read. 

— William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra. 



148 



Beyond the world of planets there is the world of stars ; beyond 
the world of stars there is the world of nebulae. 

— Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. 



capitulation to the wind-woven, flame-winged soldiery of 
the sun. 

There were chateaux with gleaming, toppling turrets 
and windows of molten gold; castles with moats, port- 
cullises and draw-bridges, wrought of mingled air and 
cloud. 

There were temples with jeweled spires and sunlit cloud- 
towers wrought by ghostly masons; cathedrals of incom- 
parable and undreamable grandeur, with pillars and 
columns, domes, and campaniles, aisles, and altars 
chastely beautiful. 

There were gorgeous palaces, with facades of tourma- 
line and colonnades of chrysophrase. 

There were parliament buildings and high- vaulted 
throne-rooms, resplendent with priceless tapestries. 

There were contours of empyrean wonders, strange, 
illusive things; profiles of ethereal figures; sun-swung 
gardens filled with trees and bowers and fronded palms; 
outlines of flying buttresses and cloud-formed, air-piled 
mountains, with poised, high-raised and pillared shafts. 

There were broken masses of crimson clouds, with 
chequered folds, and torn and sundered edges, lighted 
by mysterious, air-fed fires. 

There were belts and lunes of brilliants, diadems of 
turquoise, tiaras of hyacinths, and multi-colored, fire- 
fretted crowns of glory. 



Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance, 
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air, 
Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests, 
Seats of the Gods in the limitless ether, 
Looming sublimely aloft and afar. 

— Bayard Taylor : Kilimandjaro. 

[149] 



Opal and jacinth, orb and shell, 
Calice and filament of jade, 
And fonts of malachite inlaid 
With lotus and with asphodel — 

— Geo. Sterling : The House of Orchids 

and Other Poems. 

There were crystal air-borne floes of light; waves of 
gold and of garnet; drifts of imperial purple; bursts of 
orange; sun-dropped splendors. 

There were riots of green, straits of tender, heavenly 
incommunicable blue, and archipelagoes of velvety violet. 

There were broken prisms; gleams of beryl and beams 
of topaz; and threads of widening, lengthening lilac, 
mingling and melting into softly shaded hues of indigo 
and of gold. 

There were pools of splendor, petrified billows of color, 
cascades of lavender, cataracts of silver and plicatures of 
rose and of pearl, paling into tranquil, blissful white 
warmed into graciousness ; and over all a soul-satisfying, 
transfiguring tenderness, sanctifying as a benediction. 

The close-rimmed sky, from castellated base-line with 
its cloud-entangled peaks, to constellated zenith, was one 
stupendous portraiture, its lines delicate and micro- 
graphic, its harmonies infinite, its beauty ineffable. 

Beyond the audacities of imagination, it was as though 
some super-human, myriad-handed painter, dipping a 
million brushes in the colors of the stars, had made the 
heavens his canvas and had pictured there the seraphic 
visions of his rapture-ravished soul — a drama set in 
beauty. 



Vain is the hope by colouring to display 
The bright effulgence of the noontide ray 
Or paint the full-orb' d ruler of the skies 
With pencib dipt in dull terrestrial dyes. 

— William Mason : Fresnoy's Art of Painting. 

[150] 



id shell, 

I 

id 
asphodt 

Sterling . The House of Orchids 
and Other Poems. 

ir-borne floes of light; waves of 
rifts of -imperial purple; bursts of 
' splendors. 

of green, straits of tender, heavenly 
nunicable blue, and archipelagoes of velvety violet 
•e broken prisms; gleams of beryl and beams 
id threads oi widening, lengthening lilac, 
ag and melting into softly shaded hues of indigo 
gold. 
re were pools of splendor, petrified billows of color, 
des of lavender, cataracts of silver and plicatures of 
nd of pearl, paling into tranquil, blissful white 
d into graciousness ; and over all a soul-satisfying, 
transfigurin^grfe&'^e^^ant^nras a benediction. 

The close-rimmed sky, from castellated I le with 

its cloud-t; as one 

stupendoi, elicate ar ro- 

graphic infinite, 

Beyond th ;U gh 

some sup • a 

million _de the 

^ ea laphic 

visions of his r ished set in 

beauty. 




by colouring to dis{v 
The bright effulgence of the noontide i 
Or paint the full-orb' d ruler of the 
With pencils dipt in dull tern 

William Mason : P. . ning. 

■ [iaii]J0] 



Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook 
To lay me down, and watch the floating clouds, 
And shape to fancy's wild similitudes 
Their ever-varying forms. 

— Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 



.52 



Therefore have I uttered that I understood not ; things too won- 
derful for me, which I knew not. 

—Job 42 : 3 : The Bible. 



Before it our tongues were silent. We had neither words 
for its description, colors for its limning, nor forms, nor 
aptitudes of speech for its portrayal. Our vocabularies 
were too limited; our concepts too meager; the poverty 
of our flesh-encumbered souls too infinite. And yet, 
within us there welled the prophecy of a nobler hour — 
the coming of a time, somewhere in God's vast infinitude, 
when our unfettered and disencumbered souls should see 
with illimitable vision, grasp concepts sublimer far than 
aught we then beheld, utter aptitudes of speech new-born 
and speak with vocabularies perfect in accuracy and infi- 
nite in extent and power. 

Fascinated by the empyreal pageantry, absorbed by 
the mysterious processes, and enamoured by the pictured 
harmonies, we lingered on the cliff-reared crest, uncon- 
scious of the passing hours, until at length there fell about 
us the azure tide and matured glory of the full-orbed, 
far-flung day. Then, turning from where we stood, we 
made our way down the mountain's snow-covered slopes 
as from a transfiguration. 



Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 



Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Chambered Nautilus. 

[153] 



The spirit of God works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to 
see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory, using the same pencil 
and outpouring the same splendor in the caves of the waters where the 
sea-snakes swim and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the 
fir-trees of the stork and the rocks of the conies as among the higher 
creatures whom He has made capable witnesses of His working. 

— John Ruskin : Modern Painters. 



The day and night we had lived were one. The scenes 
we had looked upon were each a part of a stupendous 
whole, one mighty, never-ending drama played by Nature's 
Godful children on a stage colossal, set with worlds and 
suns and constellations ; with hills and mountains, forests, 
brooks and rivers ; with cataracts and canyons — com- 
passed by space-filled, air-built walls — hung with por- 
traitures rapturous and divine, and roofed with the dread 
infinity of stellar distance. 

We had not seen the All-Great — the Absolute One— but 
we had seen the work of His omnipotent hands; we had 
beheld His footprints, felt His presence and been touched 
by His glory. As we descended, we conversed but little 
and then with hushed voices. But as we walked, our 
hearts burned within us for our elate and chastened souls 
were glad with a new and solemn joy. Amid the wonders 
of His handiwork we had re-acknowledged Him, and pos- 
sessed again the Great Assurance that some day we should 
rend the veil, stand in His presence and see Him face to 
face ! 



It were a journey like the path to Heaven. 

— John Milton : Comus. 

"Gloria in excelsis" still seemed to be sounding over all the white 
landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling 
that, whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had 
gained this glorious morning would enrich our lives forever. 

— John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 

[154] 



